The Reason I Hold on
by heliosia
Summary: Alfred ended his relationship with him months ago but finds it hard to keep him out of his life entirely. Relapse happens, and he has to relearn what it is that makes him happy and whole, and if in that equation the man he relies on still fits in. Warnings inside


Warning and triggers at the bottom. It may be worth it to peek at them because they are sort of hefty, but they are also spoilers. Proceed with discretion.

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Every time Alfred steps into the elevator, he's faced with just a few short of a million reflections of his upper body. He tightens his fist around the paper bag digging into his palm so that he can rest his elbow against the handrail and stare into the first faceted reflection right in the eyes. He hates this elevator for the simple fact that it's the one place where he's forced to assess his own appearance every day.

He hadn't been careful enough with brushing his teeth this morning because he's been walking around all day with a white stain in the middle of his chest. That's really hot, he thinks with a twist of his mouth and a futile scratch at the stain. His skin is looking pretty gnarly today too, right in the middle of his forehead. There's at least three active, white-topped volcanoes ready to pop.

The doors clank open and Alfred pushes himself away from the mirror as someone else gets on the elevator. To avoid that awkward "gazes accidentally meeting in the mirror" moment, he faces the one non-reflective surface in the elevator and watches the lights from the other floors slowly slip by through the crack in the doors. The silence lasts three floors.

"It's been a while, hasn't it?"

His eyes jump to the left. The other guy has his back to Alfred and rocks back and forth on his heels as he scrolls down the screen on his phone. As if he can feel the weight of Alfred's stare on him, he glances up and stares him down in the left side mirror. Embarrassed to have been caught, Alfred ducks his head down so quickly his glasses slide down his nose.

"Already have your eye on other men, too."

Alfred's gaze slides across the tile until it's stopped by the other guy's red converse. Compared to Alfred's sneakers, the other guy's feet are tiny. It's not as if he has much to hold up though, with his chicken-bone legs and thin, little waist. The fingers on the phone are bony, and judging from the long, black hair and the eyes Alfred caught in the mirror, the guy's Asian. They're always puny, he judges.

The doors ring open and the guy steps out onto his floor with a whip of his ponytail over his shoulder. His movements cut so smoothly through the air that he swears he hears the air snap around him. It's like watching a paper airplane slice through the sky.

"Like what you see?"

Once the doors finally close, Alfred glares slidelong at the other multi-faceted face in the mirrors. A million mouths curl up into a lopsided grin, but in the closest reflection his smile gleams right into Alfred's eyes. As much as Alfred wishes that other face was sinister or even just a little bit ugly, his green eyes, high cheekbones, and dark brows are flawless. He has to swallow his own heartbeat back into his chest to manage words to address him.

"The fuck are you doing here?" he spits.

His eyebrows collapse over his eyes into a deep, furrowed confusion. "Excuse me? You invited me over. Don't attack me as though I'm the one being foul company when you can't even control your own mouth." He steps closer to Alfred and hovers his forearm around Alfred's back, eyes to the door already. "This is your floor."

Of course this was his floor, Alfred fumes as he stomps out of the elevator and leaves his unwelcome company behind. He lives here.

He wants to get into his apartment as soon as possible and drop the company he didn't mean to pick up, but as purposefully as he sweeps down the hall he still holds the door open for him out of habit. "Wait-fuck," he says only after the other slips by him. He slams the door behind them.

Now that Alfred's literally invited him into his apartment, from experience he knows there's little he can do to get rid of him aside from ignoring his presence entirely. He drops his bag of groceries onto the counter and forgets about putting the milk away because he's slouching back on the refrigerator.

Even if Alfred is ignoring him, he isn't ignoring Alfred. As he rummages through the bag to make himself dinner his stare is an extra weight on his shoulders, slowing down his movements with self-consciousness. "What do you think you're doing?" he asks.

Alfred peels the carrot vigorously.

He hears a tisk and the slow shuffle of steps behind him. "Don't be difficult, love," he sighs right into his ear, which stops the peeler halfway down the carrot in Alfred's hands. "I know you've missed me. If you really meant to send me away, you'd have done it."

Oh, this is bad.

With a lot of intention, Alfred finishes the swipe of his peeler and starts on the next column. Alfred knows he wants him gone, and he had been really sure of it in the elevator. If there was any doubt about it now, it wasn't very hard to remember all the nasty and true things he'd shouted at him last time he showed up. It took a lot of purpose and justification to be that angry.

"I don't think you really meant what you told me last time," he continues and takes the wind out of Alfred's inner monologue with barely a breath. His hands come up around Alfred's, but he stubbornly refuses to stop his task. "That doesn't mean it didn't hurt to listen to you. You had a lot bottled up, didn't you? And instead of trusting me to help you, you ran away. I never deceived you as much as you wanted to believe. I was always there for you."

Alfred gives up on the carrot, but just for now. He focuses all of his concentration instead into what he thinks is a pretty good show of willpower. It takes a lot of it when he feels little, warm breaths of air just behind his ear and his fingers nudging into the spaces between Alfred's clenched hands.

He swats his hands away with a snap, "Stop. I have shit to do." He gestures shortly to the carrot in the sink. "Between this damn plate of pasta I'm trying to make and your crooning, I think I'm going to risk a shirt full of tomato stains over an earful of crap."

That was the problem with having him around, Alfred reminds himself. He got in the way of everything, distracted him away from what he typically liked doing. When he was here, it was always about him and he could forget about the stack of homework he had, his Xbox, and his already pretty pathetic social life. And he had to start all over again the last time Alfred had sent him away, which had been a lot of work he really wasn't used to doing, and his reestablished life was pretty delicate at this stage. He couldn't afford to let him tip it over by dropping back into his life.

"Are things really better since you kicked me out?" he said and just like the first time kicked the legs right out from underneath Alfred's argument.

"I understand that last time you were upset, and you're still upset. But separation hasn't been good to you, I know." His hands slide up Alfred's sides. Alfred follows them with his own hands as they wrap around him and settle over the part of his stomach where he can feel he's let himself go.

"You've had it rough for a long time. Don't think I haven't notice how much this exhausted you. I don't want to see you so unhappy - far from it, I want so badly to help you. You just have to let me back in."

Alfred's a trembling idiot when he leans around to press his lips to the corner of his mouth and lick at the bits of glaze the donut he had earlier left. But it isn't that fluttering, weak-kneed shaking he gets from looking from the ledge of a tall building or while playing some indie thriller game. He's not afraid.

It's just that no one gets him like he does. He doesn't even have to explain it to him to hear him articulate every issue Alfred didn't even know he had. Alfred did have a pretty shitty week and before he'd run into him, he was on his way home to cook up some greasy, carb-y comfort food and flop into his bed. He's exhausted and so tauntingly alone that the wind might as well be whistling through his empty chest.

But he always knows exactly what to say to patch the hole in Alfred's actions where motivation drips out. Despite their rough patches, he always encouraged Alfred to push ahead farther, do a little more than he had previously. It's such a productive and healthy relationship that Alfred suddenly puzzles over why he'd wanted him gone in the first place.

He could be doing a lot worse. He's not doping up on crack or running around with the Crypts, and definitely not hurting anybody else. Everyone has their guilty pleasures, the stuff they fall back on because it's familiar and comforting. So his is depending a little heavily on a relationship with a guy who isn't always the nicest kid in the sandbox, but who cares and supports and comes back even when Alfred kicks him out without giving a fuck.

Maybe he should reconsider this when he hasn't just been promised a hefty claim to devotion that stretched to the moon and back and when he's being kissed on the cheek even with all the acne on it. While the thought whispers in the back of his head he's already turning around in his arms. His crooked grin and smiling eyes greet him, and Alfred exhales effortlessly.

"Oh fuck," Alfred grins and runs his shaky hand through his hair because he doesn't know what else to do. It isn't going to be as easy as it feels right now, but that problem seems like small potatoes when his chest is swelling like he's about to take flight. "Uh...yeah." His throat gets tight. "Yeah, to be honest? I want you to stay."

He laughs through the tingling in the corners of his eyes because crying is exactly what he doesn't want to do. He can't help it either, though. The only thing he could remember now were days on days of collapsing in his room after squeezing every drop of energy he had into going to school and work, and purposefully trudging through a daily routine that rung hollow and foreign after his departure. He'd rebuilt a modicum of normalcy, but he was quickly forgetting the reasons that had motivated him to move on in the beginning.

"What can I say? You drive a hard bargain, Ed." Alfred does his best to make a joke about how anxious he's feeling and the fact that he nearly cried all over himself. It doesn't matter so much when Ed smiles at Alfred with such brilliance that it has him ducking his head. He doesn't get why Ed reserves such a pretty smile for Alfred, but the least he can do in return is to make him every bit as happy as he makes Alfred.

Sort of a tall order, he thinks.

He takes Alfred's hand and draws his eyes up to his clear green ones. "Shall we get along with making up then, love?"

Heart hammering, Alfred nods with transfixed eyes on Ed's slight frame. "Fuck yeah," he says and gets the best, hearty laugh from him that he's heard in forever.

The glint in his eyes is all the coaxing that Alfred needs to push away from the kitchen and the quickly spoiling dairy and half-peeled carrots. They crash and tumble over each other, drunk on ecstasy, and Alfred can barely control himself long enough for the bathroom door to slam behind them before he's bent over and exactly where Ed wants him all over again.

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**Warnings/Triggers:** abusive relationship, anorexia

**A/N:** Hopefully I'll have the subsequent parts up soon. Wouldn't bet on it though. :') I'm awful with deadlines.


End file.
